7
Studies of Wenzhou among western scholars have also highlighted some of the locality’s
more exceptional characteristics, but they have also been somewhat more analytical and
therefore comparative in their explanations for Wenzhou’s contemporary political economy. Ya-
Ling Liu, for example, offers a critical juncture argument by tracing Wenzhou’s localism and
renegade capitalist tendencies to its particular “liberation” experience during the communist
revolution.
13
Because communist liberation of Wenzhou in 1949 was achieved by indigenous
guerrilla forces rather than Mao’s Red Army, Liu argues that local cadres maintained the
alliances that they had developed with Wenzhou landlords and merchants during the pre-1949
period. As a result, the socialist state never developed the capacity
14
to carry out collectivization
successfully and eradicate private economic activity in Wenzhou.
15
Kristen Parris’ analysis
similarly stresses the collusion of lower-level cadres and citizens in obstructing central policy to
facilitate economic development; and agrees with Liu’s assessment that Wenzhou’s case exposes
the post-1949 government as a “sporadic totalitarian state” with limited success in imposing its
will on uncooperative localities.
16
Following Timothy Mitchell and Jeffrey Isaac, however,
Parris also suggests that the boundaries of state and society are shifting through a process of
“chronic negotiation.”
17
Notwithstanding the conceptual complexity of employing the term
13
Liu, “Reform from Below.”
14
This is meant in the sense of Mann's notion of "infrastructural" as opposed to "despotic" power of the state.
Michael Mann, "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results," Archives of European
Sociology no. 25 (1984): 185-213.
15
Wenzhou's localism was most dramatically evident during the Cultural Revolution when violence broke out
between provincial-level Red Guard groups from Hangzhou and local rebel factions. See Keith Forster, Rebellion
and Factionalism in a Chinese Province: Zhejiang 1966-1976 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1990).
16
Kristen Parris, "Local Initiative and National Reform: the Wenzhou Model of Development," China Quarterly
134 (June 1993): 242-263.
17
Timothy Mitchell, “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics,” American Political
Science Review, no. 85 (March 1991): 77-96; and Jeffey C. Isaac, Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
Convention